SJM Concerts PresentREJJIE SNOWThe WaterfrontTuesday 24th April 2018Doors 7.30pm14+£20By most metrics, Rejjie Snow appears to be a rap artist and that'stechnically true. But he doesn't see it that way, and in any case the simplicity of the label (orany label, really) obscures what makes him different, which is pretty much everything. 'I thoughtI'd be blacklisted from hip-hop for being Irish,' he says, but that's only the most obvious thingsetting him apart. It's not just that he grew up the only black kid on Dublin's Northside, wherethere's no music scene to speak of. It's that Rejjie is a scene unto himself.
He lives whereverhis suitcase settles, wherever the songs send him — Los Angeles, New York, London — making albumsin the middle of making other albums, and tangling words into beautifully complex knots that blurbiography with fantasy over a shifting mass of rainy loops, technicolor keys, and trippypercussion. And then there's his voice, deep and otherworldly, capable of riding a beat withmetronomic precision, cooing to raw piano, or yawping Prince-like over a soul-rock-jazz groove.His influences are as disparate as George Michael and Charles Bukowski. He designs clothes andpaints. He sees the moon as his first love. He almost had a career as a soccer star, but insteadRejjie has toured with Madonna, recorded with left-field dance genius Kaytranada and, aftersigning to 300 Entertainment in 2016, become labelmate to other outsiders like Young Thug andFetty Wap.To be fair, the Irish thing is pretty important to Rejjie becomingthe proud and fearless creator that he is.
He was nurtured with the perfect combination offeeling free — his parents supported his interests and their Drumcondra neighborhood was niceenough — and out-of-place — his friends were all white and listened to techno. Dad was a softwareengineer born in Nigeria and mom, who worked retail, was Jamaican-Irish.
He went to theaterschool, practiced sports, and began his hip-hop education via Playstation games like GrandTheft Auto and Tony Hawk, plus learned about Wu-Tang and Nas when an older cousinfrom Nigeria came to visit. In quiet, he'd trawl YouTube and mimic his favorite bars (many ofwhich came from MF DOOM back then).
By 17 he was booking studio time and getting in trouble forgraffiti. None of that stopped him from moving to Florida to attend a prep school on a soccerscholarship.
Except, 'I dropped a track on YouTube a couple of months before I left for America,'says Rejjie. It was 'Dia Dhuit,' Gaelic for 'hello,' under his old name Lecs Luther. 'Suddenlyit's doing 50,000 views a month and I'm out there trying to do football.' A year later, after hetransferred to the Savannah College of Art and Design, Elton John's management company sent ablack SUV to pick Rejjie up in the middle of class. Naturally, he signed with them, dropped outof college, and started taking music seriously.Rejjie moved to London on his own, couch-surfing with friends andbuilding a community of like-minded music friends through Soundcloud and, occasionally, hittingup their managers (which is how he came to be sitting on a treasure trove of unreleased collabswith buddy King Krule).
This is where the man born Alexander Anyaegbunam became Rejjie Snow. Hedropped the Rejovich EP in 2013 and, for a brief moment, outdid Kanye West and J. Coleon the iTunes hip-hop chart. And then our hero kinda disappeared for a minute. As interest in himspread, Rejjie, who admits to being shy, took time out to deal with family stuff and get hiscareer right.
He was coaxed back out in 2015, understandably, by the opportunity to open forMadonna on her Rebel Heart tour. It was kind of a disaster — 'Sound for my set wasterrible, there were 20,000 people booing,' he says, 'I still wonder why she hit me up' — but thegig got him thinking about his now fiery band-backed live show.
And the gig was bookended by aspree of new music: the Pharrell-channelling 'All Around the World' produced by Cam O'bi (Chancethe Rapper, Vic Mensa) and with a video starring Lily-Rose Depp; wobbly Kaytra team-up 'BlakkstSkin,' about interracial romance; and the double-sided 'Keep Your Head Up' single, a positive cutanchored by his soothing baritone. That was the first of many 300 Ent.
Releases as Rejjiegradually unveils the extent of his artistry.Rejjie's debut album is on the way. It's executive produced byRahki, who won a Grammy with Kendrick Lamar, and it's already given us a handful of impressively(though not unexpectedly) diverse gifts.
There's the moody G-funk of 'Crooked Cops,' which Rejjiewrote after watching police violence explode in the U.S., and the thrilling 'Flexin',' ahypermodern trap-addled bleak-banger full of unapologetic braggadocio. The chiming 'D.R.U.G.S.'
Already surpassed 4 million YouTube streams and its followup, 'Pink Beetle,' was named 'HottestRecord in the World' by BBC Radio 1's Annie Mac. And this time, rather than retreat amidstgrowing anticipation, Rejjie went ahead and dropped a full-length mixtape on the way to releasinghis LP: 2017's The Moon & You, an experimental beast of a different stripe that,despite a Joey Bada$$ cameo, puts him more squarely in the camp of genre-less auteurs likeShabazz Palaces, Anderson.Paak, and Thundercat. 'That was just some shit I made that needed toget out,' says Rejjie. 'I've always done things impulsively — I made Moon over athree-week period.' Which is wild to think about. That a guy who says he barely even listens torap anymore could so thoroughly flip the art form with less than a month to do so speaks volumesto the potential he packed within his slim frame. And it's all the more reason to pay closeattention to his music, whatever you want to call it.
The next opportunity is appropriatelyastral — a brand new single called “Virgo' which is already shaping up to be Rejjie’s biggestsong yet as the recipient of Track of the Week accolades by three BBC Radio 1 DJs in Annie Mac,Clara Amfo and Adele Roberts. By those metrics, Rejjie Snow appears to be a rap artist on his wayto the top. SJM Concerts PresentREJJIE SNOWThe WaterfrontTuesday 24th April 2018Doors 7.30pm14+£20By most metrics, Rejjie Snow appears to be a rap artist and that'stechnically true.
But he doesn't see it that way, and in any case the simplicity of the label (orany label, really) obscures what makes him different, which is pretty much everything. 'I thoughtI'd be blacklisted from hip-hop for being Irish,' he says, but that's only the most obvious thingsetting him apart. It's not just that he grew up the only black kid on Dublin's Northside, wherethere's no music scene to speak of. It's that Rejjie is a scene unto himself. He lives whereverhis suitcase settles, wherever the songs send him — Los Angeles, New York, London — making albumsin the middle of making other albums, and tangling words into beautifully complex knots that blurbiography with fantasy over a shifting mass of rainy loops, technicolor keys, and trippypercussion.
And then there's his voice, deep and otherworldly, capable of riding a beat withmetronomic precision, cooing to raw piano, or yawping Prince-like over a soul-rock-jazz groove.His influences are as disparate as George Michael and Charles Bukowski. He designs clothes andpaints.
He sees the moon as his first love. He almost had a career as a soccer star, but insteadRejjie has toured with Madonna, recorded with left-field dance genius Kaytranada and, aftersigning to 300 Entertainment in 2016, become labelmate to other outsiders like Young Thug andFetty Wap.To be fair, the Irish thing is pretty important to Rejjie becomingthe proud and fearless creator that he is. He was nurtured with the perfect combination offeeling free — his parents supported his interests and their Drumcondra neighborhood was niceenough — and out-of-place — his friends were all white and listened to techno. Dad was a softwareengineer born in Nigeria and mom, who worked retail, was Jamaican-Irish.
He went to theaterschool, practiced sports, and began his hip-hop education via Playstation games like GrandTheft Auto and Tony Hawk, plus learned about Wu-Tang and Nas when an older cousinfrom Nigeria came to visit. In quiet, he'd trawl YouTube and mimic his favorite bars (many ofwhich came from MF DOOM back then). By 17 he was booking studio time and getting in trouble forgraffiti.
None of that stopped him from moving to Florida to attend a prep school on a soccerscholarship. Except, 'I dropped a track on YouTube a couple of months before I left for America,'says Rejjie. It was 'Dia Dhuit,' Gaelic for 'hello,' under his old name Lecs Luther. 'Suddenlyit's doing 50,000 views a month and I'm out there trying to do football.'
A year later, after hetransferred to the Savannah College of Art and Design, Elton John's management company sent ablack SUV to pick Rejjie up in the middle of class. Naturally, he signed with them, dropped outof college, and started taking music seriously.Rejjie moved to London on his own, couch-surfing with friends andbuilding a community of like-minded music friends through Soundcloud and, occasionally, hittingup their managers (which is how he came to be sitting on a treasure trove of unreleased collabswith buddy King Krule). This is where the man born Alexander Anyaegbunam became Rejjie Snow. Hedropped the Rejovich EP in 2013 and, for a brief moment, outdid Kanye West and J. Coleon the iTunes hip-hop chart.
And then our hero kinda disappeared for a minute. As interest in himspread, Rejjie, who admits to being shy, took time out to deal with family stuff and get hiscareer right. He was coaxed back out in 2015, understandably, by the opportunity to open forMadonna on her Rebel Heart tour. It was kind of a disaster — 'Sound for my set wasterrible, there were 20,000 people booing,' he says, 'I still wonder why she hit me up' — but thegig got him thinking about his now fiery band-backed live show. And the gig was bookended by aspree of new music: the Pharrell-channelling 'All Around the World' produced by Cam O'bi (Chancethe Rapper, Vic Mensa) and with a video starring Lily-Rose Depp; wobbly Kaytra team-up 'BlakkstSkin,' about interracial romance; and the double-sided 'Keep Your Head Up' single, a positive cutanchored by his soothing baritone.
That was the first of many 300 Ent. Releases as Rejjiegradually unveils the extent of his artistry.Rejjie's debut album is on the way. It's executive produced byRahki, who won a Grammy with Kendrick Lamar, and it's already given us a handful of impressively(though not unexpectedly) diverse gifts. There's the moody G-funk of 'Crooked Cops,' which Rejjiewrote after watching police violence explode in the U.S., and the thrilling 'Flexin',' ahypermodern trap-addled bleak-banger full of unapologetic braggadocio.
The chiming 'D.R.U.G.S.' Already surpassed 4 million YouTube streams and its followup, 'Pink Beetle,' was named 'HottestRecord in the World' by BBC Radio 1's Annie Mac. And this time, rather than retreat amidstgrowing anticipation, Rejjie went ahead and dropped a full-length mixtape on the way to releasinghis LP: 2017's The Moon & You, an experimental beast of a different stripe that,despite a Joey Bada$$ cameo, puts him more squarely in the camp of genre-less auteurs likeShabazz Palaces, Anderson.Paak, and Thundercat. 'That was just some shit I made that needed toget out,' says Rejjie. 'I've always done things impulsively — I made Moon over athree-week period.'
Rejjie Snow Rejovich Rarity Costume
Which is wild to think about. That a guy who says he barely even listens torap anymore could so thoroughly flip the art form with less than a month to do so speaks volumesto the potential he packed within his slim frame. And it's all the more reason to pay closeattention to his music, whatever you want to call it. The next opportunity is appropriatelyastral — a brand new single called “Virgo' which is already shaping up to be Rejjie’s biggestsong yet as the recipient of Track of the Week accolades by three BBC Radio 1 DJs in Annie Mac,Clara Amfo and Adele Roberts. By those metrics, Rejjie Snow appears to be a rap artist on his wayto the top.The Waterfront 139-141 King Street, Norwich, NR1 1QH, United Kingdom.